


His Dead Materials

by thedarkfourth



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:08:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 19,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27333196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedarkfourth/pseuds/thedarkfourth
Summary: Chapter 1 in a hopefully ongoing story. The new head of the Eighth House follows a mysterious agenda in the wake of the sudden loss of the Empire's heirs at Canaan House.Follows from"Trial of Glass"and from the epilogue section of"Naomi the Second".The title is a reference to Philip Pullman, but this is not a HDM AU or anything like that.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

A ship already stood upon the spotless ceramic tiles that pixelated a gold-brown pattern across the landing field at the House of the Fifth. Against this background, the stately shuttle shone with steel curved in exotic and superfluous contours, complementing the native earth-tone tiles with its whimsical swathes of seafoam green.

Through thin rectangles of plex, Lydia’s eyes were fixed on the shuttle as they approached it from above. Like her own ship that was slowly descending to land alongside, it did not belong here. When they landed, the matt white paint on their steel exterior would form a graceless void against the pretty colors beside and below.

“Never thought I’d come here,” said Bova after they landed and took their first steps onto the immaculate tiles. “Looks just about as posh as everyone says.”

Lydia scowled but didn’t respond. She pulled her bulky white hood over her sheaves of black hair, and clanked forward with the long, slow strides of a necromancer in plate armor. Bova fell in a half-step behind as they headed towards the far side of the landing field, where a figure was waiting for them. As they left their own shuttle, Lydia glanced back again at its eccentric green companion. A child’s face watched her from an oval window, expressionless.

“I see we are not the only visitors today,” said Lydia as they reached their host.

“Indeed. The Seventh were supposed to have departed hours ago, only they insisted on staying to admire the Hall of Portraits. My condolences on the loss of Master Octakiseron, Steward.”

Lydia gave the speaker her practiced suffer-no-fools eyebrows. An expression honed over the millennia by her House to convey the Eighth’s distaste for the universe in general and the recipient in excruciating particular. In this case the victim was an older woman in brown robes. Lydia was pleased to see that the dignitary’s natural Fifth tact and experience were already challenged by the nervousness visited upon all who dealt with the Eighth. She smiled like a wolf.

“And mine for Lady Pent. I wish I could have known her.”

“The Fifth mourns deeply. What - ah - can our House help you with, Steward? If you will forgive my being direct. It has been - too long since the Templars graced us with their presence.”

“I will explain my purpose to the Court,” Lydia said, unblinking.

“Ah. Indeed. I will see if we can accommodate you in what remains of the session. I’m afraid the audience with the Seventh took rather a long-”

“The White Glass would take notice,” said Lydia, breezily, as if to the sky, “if the envoys of Rhodes were shown favour when its own were not.”

The old woman made a series of little bows.

“Of course, of course. I meant no… I will inquire at once. Please avail yourself of any refreshments or ablutions you require.”

They were guided through solemn cloisters along quads of patrician brick masonry, and shown to a waiting room while the luckless diplomat hurried away, tutting. 

“Room” was an insufficient term. It was more like a waiting suite, or a waiting two-story country house. The lower floor had kitchens with massed ranks of tea tins, fancy crockery and several interesting varieties of kettle, as well as vast, tiled washing chambers where one could happily steam for hours. The upper floor was simply one giant lounge full of antique armchairs and even a billiards table. Bova experimented with a button that retracted the faux-wood-panel ceiling, revealing a huge glass skylight through which one could gaze at the perpetual electric storms that surrounded the entire dome of the Fifth House in tremendous ripples of bright grey and silver clouds. Lydia made her close it again.

She had finished three espressos from the sleek black machine and was absently losing a game of darts against her cavalier by the time someone came for them. She and Bova turned at the sound of rapid footsteps on the staircase. 

“Sister Octella, is it? We can’t help you.”

A middle-aged man dressed in a tweed suit and more flappy Fifth robes stood before them, leaning on the banister like he had just popped up to say dinner was ready. He had dark skin, glasses, wavy grey hair and a neat beard of the same color.

“I beg your pardon?”

“We already tried,” he continued, breathlessly. “We did everything. We said the same to the other Houses. There’s no sign of any of them.”

“Are you saying-”

“Yes,” the man closed his eyes, like he was trying hard to be patient. “Our best and most experienced summoners have been working around the clock since we got the news. Not so much as a shade or whisper can be called from any who answered the Emperor’s summons. All we’ve got is a parade of unrelated ghosts and demons. The exorcists are pulling double shifts.”

Lydia stared at him. Finally, she handed her dart to Bova.

“I’m sorry, who are you?” she said.

“Albert Quintosa, Treasurer of Koniortos Court and Senior Summoner. I’ve personally overseen the work.”

“Lord Quintosa. I have two sarcophagi lying in state on the Eighth containing the verified corpses of my House’s heir and cavalier primary. Just weeks ago they were alive and well. Are you trying to tell me that the vaunted Fifth House thinks their spirits have simply vanished into oblivion?”

“Yes,” he said, and he removed his glasses, folding them neatly into a pocket.

“Well tough shit,” said Lydia. The man actually smiled at that. “That’s simply not good enough. I must speak to Master Octakiseron. I  _ will  _ speak with him. You will render me this service or-”

“Please, I’m begging you. Just stop. I swear it on the stones of my House. We have done all that is possible. You are welcome to enjoy the hospitality of the Fifth as long as you please. But we cannot help you in this. You’re the last House to ask, by the way. Unless you count the Ninth.”

“I do not,” said Lydia. “And I say again, that’s not good enough. I have brought both the flesh and the effects of the late Master to aid the summons. You will try again.”

“I’ll say this one more time,” began Albert, wearily, but he stopped at a new voice.

“I challenge the Fifth House for the right to render service.”

They both looked at Bova.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” said the man, deadpan. Lydia continued to stare at her cavalier, wide-eyed. Then she composed her face and turned back to the Treasurer.

“The Eighth. Does not. Kid,” she said.

“This is how your House does things, is it? You don’t get what you want, so you resort to swords?”

Lydia took a breath and deployed Horrible Eighth Expression #17: serene malevolence.

“ _ Our _ House knows its duty; there is no need to teach it with swords, Treasurer. I know the Fifth are sticklers for tradition, but will it really be necessary to take off my gauntlet and throw it down?”

The tweed-clad man flung his arms in the air. 

“As if the bloody revenants weren’t bad enough,” he muttered to himself, as he turned and trudged back down the stairs. “Come along! I suppose I’ll have to find you a cavalier to hack at. If there are any who aren’t on exorcist bodyguard duty.”

Forty-five minutes later, they were gathered in a courtyard of ancient, cracked grey stones. It was a worn, faded arena for the coming theatrics, and yet extravagant purple-flowered vines crept along much of the surrounding brickwork: a supreme show of opulence to put living foliage on display with no practical purpose.

“The Court’s traditional duelling field,” explained Albert with a gesture, while Bova did her warm-up moves behind him. “Barely used these days. Now let’s see… I did ask if the Seventh delegation would like to arbitrate, but I’m afraid they’ve already left. So I fetched young Gwendoline here. She’s on an exchange from the Sixth, a very promising archivist. 

He gave the grey-robed twelve-year-old girl beside him a kindly hair-ruffle. She stared at Lydia and Bova with undisguised terror.

“I’ll be impartial,” she said, as if begging for her life. “It’s my first duel.”

Lydia tried her damndest not to smile.

“Now listen, Eighth,” continued Albert with an approving nod. “You made a formal challenge, and I’m going along with it because I don’t want to offend you and, well, it’s a bit of a novelty. We just can’t say no to formality here. But there’s a couple of conditions. Firstly, you can’t expect the impossible. If you win, I’ll personally conduct the umpteenth summoning attempt and try my very best to find your man. But it’s not going to work - I’ve done everything I can think of already, and frankly, I’m knackered. As long as you know that going in. Secondly,” he hurried on, before Lydia could respond. “I absolutely refuse to stand for any kind of needless violence. The terms are to the touch.”

“To the floor,” rumbled Bova, behind him. He turned.

“Fine. To the floor. But I warn you both - if anyone gets badly hurt I’ll consider this a major diplomatic incident. Agreed? Good. Ah, here’s your opponent. One of our best cavs, actually. Ranked twelfth in the House lists, last I checked.”

A smartly dressed woman was jogging towards them down a nearby cloister. She wore a gold-trimmed blazer and Cohort-crisp dress trousers, her forehead hidden behind a copious chestnut fringe. Bova had gone still. The newcomer was considerably shorter and leaner than her, but she was spry, radiating both youth and experience. She gave them a genuinely warm smile as she got near, and bowed until her head passed her waist. 

“Serafina Quinnion, Custodian of Koniortos Court, at your service,” she said. “It’s truly an honor and a delight!”

“Yes, thrilled,” yawned Lydia. “Is everyone ready?”

The cav smiled even wider, and drew herself up. Lydia could tell she had Cohort training. She tugged off the blazer and flung it to Albert in one smooth motion.

“I’m ready,” she trilled, and stepped smartly into the center of the court. Bova strode to meet her without hurrying, wearing her plain training leathers that showed the full length of her scarred, tree-branch arms. She stopped two paces away and held out her left hand, opening it to reveal a little mound of fine white sand. Serafina Quinnion could barely contain her glee.

“Powder! Extraordinary. You will surely have the element of surprise. But I won’t go easy, Eighth!”

She clutched a nasty serrated knife to her chest, her eyes twinkling. 

The Treasurer was smiling too. He leaned towards poor Gwendoline, her eyes wide and trembling. “Off you go, like I told you. You’ll do fine.”

“To the, uh, floor,” the girl said, her face pale. She looked up at Albert. “Cavalier’s mercy.”

“Good. Wonderful. Then you say “call”,” he whispered.

“Call!”

“Serafina the Fifth!”

“Bova the Eighth. No matter the cost.”

“Seven paces!” chirped Gwendoline, warming to the moment. “Begin!”

Lydia hated this. She could never tell what was happening. Bova always said she knew in the first few strokes if she would win or lose, but to Lydia it looked only like two blades flying manically, steel ringing like a factory floor. As soon as it began she felt a dizzying chill, like she’d been struck on the spot with a fever. Her legs felt like concrete, and she wiped her forehead.

The two swords danced. Bova flew forwards, offhand held low behind her, only to be pressed back again by an opponent who had twice as many blades and used them like a master. But for all Serafina’s seeming advantage, she was clearly nervous about that powder. Every time Bova’s left hand shifted position even slightly, the Fifth would fall back and play for space. The third time this happened, Bova cunningly anticipated it and ducked down into a roll, leaping up again and  _ spinning _ ; while Serafina kept her eyes on that fistfull of powder, she failed to prepare for the Eighth’s right elbow, which swung around and caught her squarely in the temporal bone, sending her staggering back but not quite down. 

Lydia felt her chill intensify from “someone walked over my grave” to “caught in my knickers in a snowstorm”. The color seemed to drain from the scene before her, the natural daytime light fading to eerie twilight. She looked to her side. Albert was frowning, but the Sixth child didn’t seem to have noticed anything wrong. Bova was pressing her advantage now, advancing on Serafina. Lydia’s eyes widened. The Fifth House cavalier was straightening up to face Bova with a series of terrible little jerks. Her face came around - and it wasn’t her.

Something else was smiling with Serafina Quinnion’s mouth, its teeth sharp and far too numerous, its mouth far too wide and dark, eyes vanished into the back of its head.

Lydia marched forward, desperately forcing herself not to panic. She heard Albert shout, “Child, run!” and the patter of Gwendoline’s feet. In the corner of her eye she could see the Fifth necromancer bend and begin tracing ghost wards on the stones with blood-daubed fingers.

The courtyard had become a murky vortex of unnatural wind. The thing that had been Serafina had grown in size, matching Bova’s height now, and as the Eighth cav tried to bring it to battle, it blocked her rapier with the flesh of its own arm, ripping the sword from Bova’s grip with a twist and a spray of dark blood. In the same movement, it floored the swordswoman with a vicious punch to the nose. 

“I bid you depart!” Albert was yelling over the wind. Yet even as his fingers completed the ward, the very stones where he worked exploded, sending him reeling as great slabs erupted upwards and thick, grisly vines burst from the ground, twisted and grasping versions of the elegant flora on the walls around them, hoary roots seeking throats to choke and smother.

Lydia took a breath and clenched her fists. A second trunk of vine was spearing its way beneath the stones, flying like a shark towards her feet from the point where the possessed woman stood chuckling forbiddingly. In response, Lydia dropped to one knee and brought both gauntlets down, glowing white and wreathed in shifting coils of lightning. She smashed them into the stone just as the vines smashed upwards from below, sending a shockwave across the courtyard like a bubble expanding at the speed of sound, instantly withering and de-animating any vegetable matter it encountered. Serafina’s grotesque mouth unfurled into a shrill and agonizing scream.

The bubble of hot, shimmering entropy stopped, vibrated with barely-checked potency, and - much more slowly - began to contract. Lydia rose to stand at the same steady speed, fists still shining but clenched at her sides, and began to walk grimly towards the creature in the center of the quad, the entropy field contracting further with each step. The intensifying winds turned her cloak and cowl to slapping sailcloth, cracking and contorting in the gale. The light from her body met the monster’s aura of darkness and dispelled it. The bubble became a sphere enclosing its entire form, where it howled and writhed as if on fire. Lydia reached out her hands, palm-up, and with a final grunt, clenched them, causing the field to shrink into the creature’s heart. 

The sound and fury ceased. Serafina’s body dropped to the floor, insensate, and was human again. Lydia used the folds of her hood to wipe the sweat from her face, turning the pristine white fabric an ugly pink. She helped Bova up from where she lay, and they leaned on each other, breathing hard. Smoke curled from the cracks in the ground, and ash drifted down from the burnt-up creepers along the bricks.

“Bloody hell,” said Albert Qintosa, pushing himself upright from where he’d been sprawled. He adjusted his glasses and smoothed down his robes, only to stop and rush over to the slumped cavalier. “She’s alive, thanks to you,” he breathed, tearing off a strip of brown fabric to wrap around the deep gash in her arm. He looked back at the Eighth pair.

“I didn’t see what you did in any detail, but it was no ward.”

“Indeed,” said Lydia, with Horrible Eighth Expression #4: patronizing silence. 

“Hrmph.” Albert stood. “Well, field’s ripped up, arbitrator’s fled. You’d be surprised how many Fifth duels end that way. Our cav’s the one on the floor, so I’m happy to concede the match. Tea?”

They stared at him, stonily, until he said. “Er, coffee? Tranquilizers?”

“I believe what we’d like,” said Lydia, “is a seance.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story continues in chapters 2-9.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lydia and Bova visit the Third and find Politics.

Lydia nibbled on a cocktail sausage while she tried furiously to avoid eye contact. This was difficult, given that the room where she currently stood contained about fifty thousand eyeballs, and eyeballs had a predictable way of being drawn towards Templars in white cloaks and shining armor, especially when everyone else was wearing black.

“We can leave, if you don’t like it,” said Bova at her shoulder.

“Two hours. We need to stay for at least two hours after the service or people will take notice. I’ll get passive aggressive communiques from the Council about it.”

At the far end of the massive hall hung a giant, wrought-iron, gilt-encrusted clock. Lydia attempted to incinerate it with her mind in the hopes that this would make it go faster. It didn’t work, but it did briefly distract her from the nosy crowd - mostly military - making small talk in small clusters across the vast, endless floor of the Royal Convention Center. The room’s horrendous gold and purple furnishings had been perpetrated by someone who had never heard of “too many” gemstones. Tapestries of dyed human skin and little wreathes of painted bones hung from every wall, most of them bejewelled as all hell.

She jumped at the sound of a shrill laugh, terrifyingly close. Bova’s hand flew to her hilt as they turned towards an apparition in the most stylish black suit ever tailored. The apparition laughed again and pretended not to notice.

“The new Steward of the Templars, and her charming cavalier. What a pleasure to have you with us!” it cooed. Lydia blinked, resolving the bearer of high-fashion mourning into a tall, slender woman with cream-coloured hair in a bun that was a marvel of hirsutal engineering. “I have such fond memories of my days studying under Brother Octestos. Oh I’m sorry, Julia Tritus, Countess,” she finished, extending a hand gloved in black velvet, knuckles up. 

Lydia took it, turned it vertical, and shook it gruffly. “I’m sure the pleasure’s all mine,” she said, leadenly. “My respects to your fallen.”

Julia composed her face, but she was still smiling at the eyes.

“Such tragedy, words can’t begin… But what a service! So moving.  _ I will make even the dying echo of your heartbeat a sword, _ ” she quoted from the tinny recording they had played during the ceremonies. “To find such courage in these trying times…”

“I am sure the eighteen thousand would have been honoured,” said Lydia, total deadpan.

“You’re  _ so  _ right. And how are you enjoying Ida? Not finding it too gaudy, I hope; a lot of people do. You must stay to admire the gardens, there’s really nothing like it. Do you play tennis?”

“I do not.”

“A pity, there’s such a view from the courts,” the Countess went on, not skipping a beat. Lydia was already regretting her insistence on the two hours. “You know, they wanted to hold the service at Trentham - some of the admirals were even saying it should be on the flagship itself. But of course they came here in the end. It’s the only place large enough. And what a crowd we have. The Fifth looking dapper as always - there’s poor Abigail's brother, the new Lord of Koniortos. And the Fourth’s latest heir, even younger than his dear sibling. And there’s my  _ wonderful  _ friend, the Marquise Triarta, talking with them. Will you excuse me a moment? It’s been so delightful to get this time to talk, I must make sure to catch you again before you leave.”

And with that she was gone, primly speed-walking towards the Marquise with as much speed as she could muster in her four-inch heels. 

“What,” said Lydia, turning to her cavalier, “was all that?”

Bova shrugged, and in the same moment they both started again as yet another crowd member got the drop on them.

“Politics,” the new voice answered.

They looked around, and then down. Before them was a girl in a waifish black dress, green ribbons fluttering in her dark hair. Her arms were folded and she looked a little angry. She couldn’t have been more than ten.

“I know you,” said Lydia. “I saw you in the Seventh’s shuttle, back at the Fifth.”

“Yes yes,” scolded the child, her tone utterly incongruous with the immaturity of her vocal chords. “You’re Lydia Octella and I’m Megaera Heptinary. Neither of us likes small talk. I’ll tell  _ you  _ about the Third House situation you have no idea that you’re in, if you tell  _ me  _ something I want to know.”

Lydia and Bova looked at each other, and back to the girl.

“Um-”

“If you ask me where my parents are, I’ll scream,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Yes, they call me annoying and precocious, or a prodigy if they think I’m not listening. I’m the new Duchess or whatever. I’m not actually in charge until I come of age, and even then I suspect they’ll find a way to replace me. I don’t have any interesting diseases, so I’m not very popular at Rhodes. Now listen up, we don’t have long til they realize I slipped away from the delegation. You must be aware there’s a power vacuum here at Ida. Tritus and Triarta are cousins with an equal claim to the throne. This whole thing is a damn stage for them to impress people - whoever scores the most diplomatic points will probably get the nod from the Ministers for coronation. It looks pretty, but there’s blood under every Third House fingernail. They’ll both want the Eighth on their side.”

The girl stopped, and raised an eyebrow, as if to check that Lydia was keeping up.

“Now it’s your turn,” she said.

“My turn for what?” replied Lydia, who was not keeping up at all.

“To provide intel to  _ me _ . I just want to know one thing. How did you manage to speak to Octakiseron? The Fifth said they tried everything, and I know for certain they weren’t lying.”

“How do you know I spoke to-!”

“I have contacts on the Fifth. I know you left the same day you arrived, not long after your tediously melodramatic duel. If you hadn’t been successful you would have stayed and made a scene.”

“Okay, stop,” Lydia begged, looking around desperately to see if anyone else across the ginormous reception hall had noticed she was being accosted by a terrifyingly perceptive infant. A large portion of them had, judging by the hasty glances.

“Not until you give me the answer you owe.” Megaera reached up and nonchalantly snagged a canape from the tray of a passing server, a few inches above her head.

“We got lucky,” Lydia hissed as quietly as possible, bending her head. “Silas wasn’t fully coherent, but we gather he’d just been ejected from some kind of holding pen in the spirit world where the Canaan House dead are being imprisoned by one of the new Lyctors. He said he was ‘falling’.”

The girl cocked her head, and actually stroked her chin. It looked ludicrous.

“That’s… not what I had guessed. Must be Tridentarius. Have any of the others been… ejected?”

“No. After we finished, Quintosa tried them all again. He got a ping from Chatur and Tettares, but it was faint, and all he could hear was crying.”

“Hm. What else did Silas say?” continued Maegara, immediately.

“He- no, look, that’s more than enough. Why am I even talking to you?”

Maegara scowled, and without another word, ran off into the crowd. Lydia straightened up and rubbed her forehead. The whole thing was like a bad dream.

“Do we still have to wait two hours?” asked Bova, who was looking as pale as Lydia felt.

“Hell no,” said Lydia. 

  
  


They caught their breath outside the Convention Center, which was situated on a raised hillside where there was an impressive view of the Third. The House’s filtration systems actually permitted a small amount of weather to enter its atmosphere, transforming it in the process from raw hydrogen into water vapour, sending puffs of genuine cloud skidding across the spires and statues of Ida. The light of the fusion reactors far below, super-heating their hydrogen envelope to keep the whole city afloat, created a simulacrum of solar refraction: a perpetual dawn of pinks and purples against which Lydia saw the great steepled palace itself silhouetted in the distance.

They hurried down in the direction of the shuttle. The milling passers-by thinned as they went, until they were quite alone among the landing docks in the shadow of the hill.

“Now where did we park that damn-” Lydia began. 

Something hit her from the side. It was Bova, barreling them both to the ground as a scarlet projectile sped past at precisely the point Lydia’s throat had been a second earlier. 

“Ambush!” growled Bova, springing back to her feet as a second missile caught Lydia in the shoulder, piercing her cloak and bouncing off her armour, coming to a rest on the asphalt right in front of her eyes. It was a wickedly sharp diamond-shaped throwing knife made from pure arterial blood crystalized to the hardness of a crimson gemstone. 

Lydia struggled upright in her bulky armor with much less grace than her cavalier.

“Get behind me,” hissed Bova. “Eyes up.”

She batted a third blood-knife from the sky with her rapier as Lydia squinted upwards.

“I see him,” said the necromancer. A figure in black combat gear crouched at the edge of a nearby warehouse rooftop. Even at this distance she could see the blood pooling in his right hand and coalescing into another weapon.

“Third assassins,” said Bova, practically hopping with adrenaline. “He’s not alone.”

Even as she said it, she spun backwards past Lydia and neatly parried away the red and gleaming daggers of two more black-clad assailants who had dropped noiselessly into the street behind them.

“I’ll deal with these!” cried the cavalier. “Watch the one on the roof!”

Lydia’s eyes hadn’t left the one on the roof. As Bova clashed with the two in the street, Lydia forced herself to ignore all other stimuli and focus. She waited until the assassin on the rooftop raised his arm to hurl another missile, and inhaled. The man froze in place, his skin turning grey and the blood drying to a crust in his hand. With his arm up, his whole body lost balance; he slowly toppled from his perch and hit the pavement with a thud. Lydia had to admit that the image was hilarious.

She turned back to her cavalier. Bova was bleeding from the head, but she had already felled one opponent and was wearing down the second. Lydia raised a bright and crackling energy gauntlet. She didn’t even have to use it - the vision itself was enough to capture the final assassin’s attention, allowing Bova to slip under his guard, tripping him and punching his lights out with a blow from her pommel.

They wasted no more time in making for the shuttle and retreating into the black heavens above. When they were safely looking down on Ida from a good distance, Bova spoke.

“So that’s what politics looks like.”

“Blood under every Third fingernail indeed,” muttered Lydia, as she helped her cavalier bandage her head wound. “I ought to file a formal letter of outrage. Only I don’t know who to blame.”

“The Marquise Triarta, obviously,” said a horribly familiar voice. “You insulted her when you left without being introduced. I did try to warn you.” 

They both turned to the typically empty pilot’s compartment. It wasn’t empty now. It was full of ten-year-old girl.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enter the Duchess.

“If you’re going to yell and make a fuss,” said Megaera  Heptinary, the Duchess of Rhodes, “then I’ve misjudged you, Sister Lydia.”

She lounged in the shuttle’s cockpit, framed by the plex screen full of stars. She’d already discarded her funeral clothes in favour of a casual mint-green sweatshirt and grey flannel trousers. She couldn’t have been more than four foot six, and absurdly girlish in appearance, even for her age. She had bright emerald eyes and chin-length black hair that looked like it had recently been hacked short with a knife. Lydia’s mind raced.

“Stowaway-” she began.

“Infiltrated a sacred Templar vessel-” continued Bova.

“Attempting to frame the Eighth House for kidnapping-”

“An eight-year-old punk who thinks-”

“Are you done?” said the girl. The two adults stopped, wide-eyed.

“Just...what are you  _ doing _ ?” begged Lydia, impulsively.

“I’m coming with you,” said Megaera, crossing her legs. “I think you’re onto something, and I want in.”

“How could you possibly know what we’re-”

“The Seventh is more resourceful than most think. We keep an eye on the other Houses. I’ve followed your progress. Your sudden rise to power. Your solo flights to the Field, the Fifth, the Third. And I checked your navigation system when I got in this shuttle. I know where you’re going next.”

“So you know that we can’t bring a child,” said Lydia. 

“You’ve already seen how useful I can be.” Megaera’s eyes were bright and sincere. “You need me. And you don’t have to worry about the Seventh. I already told them I’m on an educational exchange to the Eighth; they were only too happy to see me go.”

There was a long silence, as the shuttle sped across the dark demesne of Dominicus. Megaera sighed.

“Look, the only person at Rhodes I ever liked was my cousin Dulcie. She was nice to me. And the Emperor sent her back to us in a box. Not like Silas - all that was left of her was ash. Old ash. Her cavalier was cremated too - except for his head, which was preserved so perfectly that even the masters of my House can’t explain it. They were both killed before they reached the First - the place  _ he  _ told them to go. I deserve to know what happened as much as you do.”

She looked them both hard in the eye.

“And I’m not eight, by the way,” she carped. She turned to Lydia. “I’m ten. I read your file. That’s the same age you were when you decided.”

Lydia felt her lungs go cold, and she shivered.

“When I decided…”

“To kill the Emperor, of course,” said Megaera.

  
  


From space, the House of the First shone like fire on water. Wreathed in the white smoke of its atmosphere, blue like the heart of a gas-ignited flame, it burned the eye. 

The small shuttle of the Eighth, bleached and blemishless in the darkness of high orbit, was not alone. A flotilla of bone-encrusted Cohort fighting craft stood sentry above a point on the First’s Southern Hemisphere. 

“You had a plan for this, right?” said Megaera, watching the forces arrayed against them. 

“Yes. To steer well clear.”

“ _ What _ ?!”

“We’re not going to Canaan House,” said Lydia. “They won’t let anyone near - even the Second was denied permission, I heard. The Emperor’s put it under personal guard.”

“So what on Earth, if you’ll excuse the pun, are we doing here?” asked Megaera. 

“Canaan isn’t the only site on the First House where he keeps his secrets.”

While she spoke, the sparkly, skeleton-strung hulls of the Cohort were vanishing behind the curve of the outrageously blue globe - and so was Dominicus. As they entered the planet’s eerie night-shadow, the Eighth shuttle began to draw closer to the black surface of the waves, the edges of its plex windows lighting with the hot glow of atmospheric entry. Finally, they saw lights below too: tiny yellow candles in an endless black ocean.

“Listen to me,” said Lydia to the girl. “Bringing you here is an act of heresy punishable by immediate execution for all of us. You can’t mention the Seventh under any circumstances. Your name is Octorius, you are an acolyte of the Eighth, and a sworn Templar. Understood?”

“Woah. This sounds awesome,” said Megaera, looking awed. Behind her, Bova frowned.

The autopilot deposited them on a landing platform hewn from the rock of a mountainside too dark to see. Winds assaulted them from every direction - the First House’s lack of climate control was a jarring ordeal for any visitor. They had given their passenger a spare cloak - comically oversized on her shoulders - but in this howling, animal weather, such clothing became weapons against their own person even when they were pulled tight and fastened. At least it mostly concealed Megaera’s lack of Templar armor. 

Before them, the carved stone reared up into hulking pillars cut from the flesh of the mountain. Huge iron doors stood between them, framed by wrought braziers of burning coal. The mighty gate, engraved with ancient symbolry, was, in fact, a mere ornament: the real doors beneath were made from eighteen inches of steel and honeycomb carbon composite, capable of withstanding point-blank thermonuclear detonation.

With a series of terrible mechanical groans, the doors swung open at their approach, and they walked into the earth.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Temples and secrets and bodies, oh my.

Lydia’s black skin flowed with cave-wall firelight. It cast a primordial orange glow across her features, turning her normally immaculate white robes to a dark volcanic canvass, and flickering over the myriad dull reflections of her matt steel armor. A half-step behind her, the flames glimmered impassively in the eyes of her rough-hewn cavalier: the tall, battle-worn, white-haired guardian whose constant companionship was the sole certainty of her adult life. And beside them, the light tried and failed to beatify the irreverent expression of Megaera, who was clutching her adult-sized cloak, and fucking loving this.

The trio stood in a subterranean temple, carved into red-brown rock, lit by nothing but burning torches around the walls. Behind were the gargantuan blast-doors, whose closing had ushered in a silence that reeked of holiness. Ahead was a wide altar, beyond which rose a 10-foot carven image of a First House skull hacked into the wall.

A dozen Templars were… just sort of standing there. Their ages ranged from pre-pubescent to blatantly elderly. They all wore the ward-sewn vestments of battle clerics, emblazoned with a blindfolded skull in bright silver embroidery in the center of the chest. Each had a sword at their hip and - the first thing Lydia noticed - clutched a large black-metal submachine gun in their arms. 

“Which one’s the Steward, do you think?” whispered a large flabby Templar in the middle of the group, more than loudly enough for everyone to hear.

“The one in the armor, idiot,” said a shaven-haired older woman beside him.

There followed a silence of more than ten seconds, during which time at least three other Templars cleared their throats nervously. 

“Judah,” hissed someone at last. “You agreed to do the talking.”

The big flabby one, Judah, adopted the expression of a trapped and hunted animal. He shuffled forward.

“So...you’re the Steward?” he said, eyes glancing in every direction except Lydia’s.

“I am,” said Lydia. She was beginning to think she might have the upper hand, but she wanted to see how it played out.

“Oh good, good. That’s good,” said Judah with a grimly relieved smile. “Yes. Good. Cos only Stewards and Masters are allowed here. And the Emperor. That’s it. But you knew that of course, sorry.” And he actually whacked his forehead with his palm in a little pantomime performance.

Another silence ensued.

“We’re prepared to fight, you know. If someone else tries to get in. We all understand our duty,” he continued suddenly, with heartbreaking earnestness. Then his expression inexplicably brightened. “Oh, uh, do you like games?” he asked.

“Don’t ask the Steward if she likes games!” whispered a gawky younger Templar with reddish hair. This caused Judah’s face to fall again.

“Sorry, Steward, uh, your Stewardship,” he mumbled. “I shouldn’t have asked. That’s not how we speak to Stewards. We don’t get much practice, I’m afraid.”

Lydia couldn’t take any more of this.

“You can call me Sister Octerlla. And I do like games, Brother ...Judah,” she said. “But right now, we’re a little tired. Tomorrow we have business in the sanctum. For now, perhaps you could show us to the accommodations.”

Relief at the clear instructions flooded the face of every Templar. The three newcomers were escorted by the cast of the universe’s weirdest subterranean cult-within-a-cult. They went out through a plex door in a hidden recess at the side of the temple, and into a more welcoming, if spartan facility where they were given a small room each. There was a bed, a basin and a picture of the Emperor in the rooms, and nothing else. Templars came rushing up with sheets and blankets. Lydia stripped her armor and used a washroom, and on the way back she glimpsed a rec area where a colourful board game with an absurd number of plastic and cardboard components was in use.

When she regained her room, Megaera and Bova were waiting. Bova had pulled her mattress in and put it at the base of Lydia’s bed, more or less without thinking. The disguised Seventh House heir, meanwhile, had her hands on her hips.

“Please tell me this is a very elaborate prank,” she said.

“It’s ...not quite what I was expecting,” Lydia admitted.

Megaera tilted her head of raggedly cropped hair sarcastically. Lydia shut the door and sat down on the bed. She took a deep breath.

“Under this temple is an ancient, pre-Resurrection facility, the details of which are intentionally lost to history. No one’s set foot there in ten thousand years aside from a very small number of Master Templars. The story goes that the Necrolord entrusted its guardianship to the Eighth House, with the goal of keeping it in strictest secrecy.”

Lydia double-checked the door, and continued. 

“It is called...the Wellspring. Its existence is known only to the Master or Steward and the Seneschal of the House. That bastard Octavimus was forced to tell me about it when I assumed my role. Naturally, I made coming here a priority, despite his insistence that doing so was highly discouraged. He said the place has been run by a top secret order who spend their entire lives here, never leaving the temple. It looks like their duty has taken its toll. Their only real job is to keep the doors shut, so I imagine the boredom must be crippling.”

“That whole story is hilarious,” said Bova, after a few moments of sober reflection. She looked at the others. Megaera was grinning. All at once they both burst into snorts of laughter - Bova trying and failing to control herself, and Megaera falling onto the floor-mattress and sniggering like it was the most delightful joke she’d ever heard. 

Lydia smiled.

“Alright, children,” she said. “You’ve had your bedtime story. Get some sleep. Tomorrow we’re cracking open the Emperor’s box of secrets.”

  
  
  


The Emperor’s box of secrets began at a simple plex trapdoor, hidden under the oven unit in the kitchen - “so his enemies can’t find it”, Judah told them seriously. 

Steel rungs led down into a utility room, with a military-grade airlock that required special codes to activate. Judah said these changed hourly and were supplied by a computer system that had been purring flawlessly for the last myriad in a safe box in the bedroom of the chief onsite Templar. He did inquire about Bova and Megaera before handing Lydia the code. She assured him that as a survivor of the Trial by Glass, she was authorized to bring two companions into the facility. He nodded gratefully.

“But it’s not safe down there,” he said. “We here are not the only guardians pledged to the Resurrector. I’m afraid for the girl.”

“Don’t worry,” chuckled Lydia. “She’s expendable. I’m only bringing her to feed to any malevolent creatures we need to distract.” 

Megaera rolled her eyes, and they stepped through deadbolt doors into whatever lay beyond, leaving Judah and his colleagues to watch forlornly. 

They emerged onto a gallery overlooking a titanic vault. At first the space was dark and formless, but their arrival caused huge sheets of light to judder into blueish brilliance, revealing… a horde. 

“It’s his treasure-store,” said Lydia, gazing down at the rows and rows of stuff.

“It’s a museum,” said Megaera. “These are relics of the world that was.”

Objects of every kind were gathered in lines across the floor of the huge space. Paintings in thick, ornate frames. Statues. Stringed instruments. Clothing. Electronics. Archaeological findings. Gear that might have been used in ancient sports, or combat. At least one mummified corpse in a flaking sarcophagus. Larger items hulked among their lesser brethren: an aircraft of completely unfamiliar design basked near the center. An entire stone archway that must once have been an impressive gate lay further off. A really huge cast-iron bell. There was a whole row consisting simply of books and documents in glass cases. Another shelf of assorted rocks, gemstones and fossils. A wall decorated in flags that had not been raised in ten thousand years, followed by a grid of posters with slogans like  _ You can do it! _ and  _ Rock and roll ain’t noise pollution _ .

A billion more items beyond knowledge or recognition filled the warehouse, stretching out into a void where the lights hadn’t even come on yet.

“You could eliminate the entire Sixth House simply by bringing them here,” said Megaera, wistfully. “Every one of them would have an aneurysm on the spot.”

“Careful,” said Bova. “This isn’t what we came for.”

“She’s right,” said Lydia, craning her neck over the gallery bannister. “We’re not interested in sentimental junk. There’s a door to another chamber below us. Let’s keep moving. Judah was right too, by the way. Every source agrees that the First House is impossibly haunted. We don’t want to be in a place like this any longer than we have to.”

They descended a long staircase of practical sheet metal and forced themselves not to wander into the labyrinth of archaic memorabilia. An autodoor opened noiselessly as they approached, and they stepped into a new kind of storage room.

This second cavern was syrupy with thanergy; Lydia and Megaera stiffened at the threshold, hair rising on their arms. The source became clear as the lights clattered on. It was a hall of trophies: a zoological catalogue, an ark of preservation. Creatures whose eyes had not seen the sky for millennia now stared at them, glassily, frozen forever like mosquitos in amber. Beasts of the pre-Resurrection holocene, furred, scaled, four-legged, aquatic, avian, ranging from the tiniest mouse to leviathans that reared above their heads. The largest of them must have been extinct long before the Resurrection, for they were skeletons only: in the center was an enormous-jawed brute brandishing dead rows of jagged teeth down at them from high above; it towered on absurd calcified femurs despite its withered, vestigial humeri.

The whole place smelled faintly citrus.

“Okay. Now this room would wipe out the Seventh.” Megaera was breathing shallowly, her body very still and her green eyes very wide. She walked forward with trembling caution, as one walked towards a sensitive explosive device. Reaching out a tiny hand to the snout of the nearest creature - a lumpy, shaggy bovine thing a good meter taller than her - she closed her eyes. After a few seconds, tears beaded in her lids and fell silently down her cheeks.

“The  _ theorems _ …” she whispered faintly.

“What’s happening?” said Bova to Lydia, when there was no sign of the girl leaving her trance.

“Let’s keep going,” Lydia muttered. “We can give the Duchess a few moments to admire the necromantic power that went into preserving these rooms. You know her whole house is devoted to this art, and here it’s been perfected. It would be like you discovering...the ultimate sword move, or something.”

“Har har,” said Bova. They began to thread their way among the extremely beguiling corpses, which stood impassively on marble pedestals of various sizes, as if flash-frozen during a brief moment of contemplation just seconds ago.

“Imagine if the Eighth House had to share its space with so many mad species,” Bova mused thoughtfully. “Imagine living in a world with myths just wandering around.”

“I won’t waste my time on hypotheticals. This room gives us one clear fact,” said Lydia, gesturing at the ranked fauna. “All this biological wealth existed before the Resurrection. And after, it didn’t. It wasn’t a legend or a story. It was here, and then it died. And there’s another fact this room reminds me of.”

Lydia paused to look at a tray of exquisitely colorful insects under a glass sheet, their bodies skewered by steel pins.

“Every killer keeps trophies,” she finished, sadly. “Ah. There’s our destination.”

They had reached the far side of the second warehouse. The lower portion of this wall was all glass, and beyond lay another room, unlit save for the telltale gleam of colored LEDs in the darkness.

There was a second autodoor in the glass, but it didn’t open when Bova approached it. She investigated an entry code panel off to the side, just below a hazard sign that read  _ CAUTION. STRICTLY AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. _

“Wait…” said Lydia, as a terrible suspicion crept over her. “There’s something -”

She looked around the room. Had the giant knife-toothed skull been facing the same way before?

She caught sight of Megaera, who was standing alongside a sleek quadruped with antlers, not far away. The ten-year-old wasn’t looking at the animal; her face was tilted up and to the side, her eyes closed, brows furrowed, like she was trying to sense the direction of a passing breeze. 

By the glass doors, Bova reached out-

“No!” Lydia shouted, but her cavalier’s finger made contact with the ancient keypad, and Megaera’s eyes sprang open.

Both necromancers flinched as the ward tripped. Even Bova looked up, finger still on the panel, like a child caught among the wrapping paper of tomorrow’s gifts. There was a dreadful silence as the three humans stared at each other over the tops of various non-humans.

The case behind Lydia exploded, shards fountaining under the sudden egress of several hundred determined insect carcasses. The antlers at Megaera’s shoulder gave a little shiver. A canine head near Lydia’s shins rotated with a cracking sound, the jaw spasming silently.

All around them, the dead remnants of the First House began to shake away a myriad of slumber with a series of terrible convulsive jerks. And then they started to moan. A chorus of unearthly exhalations in an entire spectrum of animal suffering filled the lofty room. The noises grew louder and more visceral as the army of beasts began to stumble from their many perches and rediscover the prospect of muscle upon tendon upon bone.

Slowly, Lydia turned at a growing rumble behind her. Her eyes moved up, and then further up, as she stared into the grizzly, tooth-filled snout of a lumbering, brown-haired monster with huge flabby arms that ended in several inches of razor claws. She only had a second to react as it fell upon her, bringing up her spectrally-charged metal fist to meet its desiccated jaws, sending the monster rearing back, howling as her necromantic lightning wreathed its massive body. Yet even as it righted itself on all four feet, Lydia took a charge to the flank from a small hairy thing with horns and the wisp of a beard at its jaw. It was still struggling to master bodily movement, and the impact was minimal, but it made her step back in surprise. So she failed to see the large length of skeletal tail bones that whipped around as the titanic center-piece skeleton turned with several ponderous, earth-shaking footfalls.

The blow from its tail sent Lydia skidding onto her rump. She just had time to glimpse Bova grappling with a primate before she noticed the ginormous feline. It was sumbling awkwardly towards her, completely betraying the smooth and sensuous grace of its intended functionality, not to mention the promise of its vivid orange-striped pelt. Yet its eyes never left hers. It was a pained and haunted look it gave her in the moment before it leapt; she was still on her back, floundering, and it would have utterly flattened her had it not suddenly _ come undone _ .

The big cat’s three hundred kilogram body withered in midair, falling well short of Lydia. She stared as it crumpled and unravelled, the joints and bones dislocating, the flesh curling away into dried-up ribbons and then dissolving into so much ash - ten thousand years of decay catching up to the poor creature in a matter of seconds.

“Get the door, I’ll hold them off,” said Megaera, her voice grim and atonal. 

Lydia scrabbled to her feet and hurried over to the girl. The Duchess of Rhodes brandished a dark and ferocious expression. Her shoulders were hunched with girlish anger, and her fists clenched out by her hips as she glared about the room, defying any beast or monster to best her. Lydia reached out a hand.

“I said get the door, Steward!” hollered the girl, over the sound of a thousand groaning throats. “I am a daughter of the Seventh House. I know everything a person can know about preservation of a corpse. I might not be able to cast theorems like these, but I can sure as the Emperor’s stupid face undo them!”

The shaggy brute Lydia had previously punched galloped towards them with a tortured bellow. Megaera glared at it, and it went the same way as the cat.

“Fair enough,” nodded Lydia, as the girl turned her attention to the massing creatures shambling towards them.

She went to the doors, where Bova was already hammering with her pommel. 

“Wait, we don’t want to smash them. See if you can lever it open.”

The cavalier pushed the blade of her rapier up against the crack between the autodoors. She managed to force it through, but the sword was too flimsy to provide much more than this millimeter or two opening. Lydia stepped up, using a thin stream of blood on Bova’s hand to form a clot inside this tiny gap. This she congealed and expanded into a larger and larger sphere of hard, springy blood. She gasped with the sting of the theorem - flesh magic was far from a strength, but brute force was always simple enough, a pure calculus of thanergy inputs.

Eventually the gap wedged between the doors was large enough to squeeze under.

“Go,” said Bova.

“You first. I’ll get the child.”

“Don’t be stupid,” said the older woman, plainly.

They both looked over to Megaera, who was slowly, grudgingly retreating back towards them under weight of numbers. None of the constructs could touch her before she melted it, but each one forced a grunt of effort from the tiny human, and they were coming thicker and faster by the second. The sound of moaning reached a crescendo.

“It’s open! Let’s go!” shouted Lydia.

“About time! Ready when you are.”

“Uh, Meg-”

“I see it,” said the girl.

The toothy giant’s skeleton had mastered its coordination and was moving towards them. It lowered its head as it built up speed, scattering the creatures beneath it, opening those vast jaws -

“Go!” screamed Megaera. But even as she said it, Bova seized her around the waist, spun her around, and shoved her under the spongy blood clot into the room beyond, where she shrieked with wrath. Lydia smote the ground with a spectral bolt, the impact causing the nearby creatures to stumble for a moment. The behemoth skeleton almost lost balance, but it righted itself and continued its charge. By this time, Lydia was also through the doors, Bova hot on her heels. The cav punched the clot free as she came through, and the doors slammed shut. An instant later, the giant skull hit the glass, but by then it had lost contact with its spinal cord: the whole enormous thing clattered to the floor, completely disassembled. 

Megaera stood before them, arms outstretched, face smeared with blood sweat, panting hard, jaw clenched in a dark, visceral execration of her elders. She glared as she pulled damp hair from her eyes.

“This isn’t the time,” she said, with liquid disdain, “but we will have words about what just happened.”

“I did what needed-” began Bova, but stopped as the lights in their new room flickered on. The three of them turned to gaze at the space, while the great moaning choir of undead creatures continued, only slightly muffled by the glass at their backs.

“This is it,” whispered Lydia. “The Wellspring.”

  
  
  



	5. Chapter 5

**24 hours later.**

As soon as they went inside the spaceship, Lydia knew they’d made a mistake. 

For a start, there was no air. Not an insurmountable problem, since they’d taken the precaution of using hazard suits, even if Megaera’s fit very poorly. Lydia wasn’t a claustrophobe, exactly. She just liked it better when there was air. She had no problem maneuvering the suit - it was much easier than plate armor - but she couldn’t help but feel pressingly conscious of the half-inch of red neoprene separating her from the abyss.

There wasn’t any gravity either. The three of them floated through the airlock hatch as ponderously as the ship itself floated around the ...installation where they found it. This space station, a collection of parabolic discs, exotic energy generators and miscellaneous tech, was itself floating aimlessly in orbit around Dominicus - one of a large constellation they had unearthed (unsunned?). But not just anywhere around Dominicus - the damn thing was  _ right up against _ the thanergetic star, well inside the circle of the Sixth House. The journey had taken their poor little white shuttle all the way to the limits of its heat tolerance just to get here, so close to the sun that they may as well have been inside it. It was all around them - even if you looked directly away, turning yourself to look out into space, the light was still so bright that a single glimpse would instantaneously blind you forever. This risk was mitigated by activating the highest grade of tinted shielding on the plex of both shuttle and haz, yet still they felt like nothing so much as kindling.

To Lydia, it was strangely...normal when they first got close to the star. She shared a glance with Megaera. There was thanergy here, literally coming off Dominicus in waves, getting stronger the nearer they came, not yet diluted by the infinity of space.

They had spotted the spaceship against the white, fiery backdrop as soon as they arrived. It was attached to the installation at its midsection, and about twice its size. Much larger than a shuttle, much smaller than a warship. It was definitely not from the Nine Houses. It looked ancient, over-large and clunky. Lydia wondered if it had been taken from the Emperor’s pre-Resurrection collection. The name printed on the side read  _ HOMECOMING _ . They’d decided to explore it as soon as they were done with the station itself.

When they got onboard, the second reason Lydia knew this decision was a mistake was the bodies. It was one big open space inside the ship, the walls lined with what she assumed were stasis pods, and in that vaulting space the bodies floated. Hundreds of them, all well-preserved - not by a master theorem as at the Wellspring, but by the frozen sterility of the vacuum. Human icicles, skins hoary and raw, almost beautifully pale with blood loss and filigree frost patterns. They had all died the same way: their chest cavities had exploded. Blood, viscera and shreds of organ, crystalline and brittle, spun among the corpses like a billion shards of the grossest imaginable glass. Megaera was already steering some daintily into a little tube. 

“For testing,” she explained, sheepishly, via the helmet comm. 

The third reason Lydia knew the spaceship was a mistake was that a moment after the ten-year-old spoke, she heard another voice, clearly and directly in her cranium. It said:

_ Nehhhh...crowwwww...mannnnn....cerrrrrrrr. _

Lydia went very still, or would have, if her gravity-less body wasn’t slowly drifting of its own accord. She reached out a hand to steady herself on the wall near the entry hatch. 

“There’s some kind of command terminal over here,” Bova was saying, inspecting a wall panel a little further off. Both she and the girl still seemed calm and curious. So they probably hadn’t heard the rasping voice that was causing Lydia’s whole mind to flagellate itself in terror. She watched as the Duchess casually pushed one of the floating corpses away when it got too close. “I’ll see if I can get any data,” Bova continued.

“I think we should wrap it up. This isn’t what we came for,” said Lydia, as calmly as she dared.

“It’s still pretty incredible,” said Megaera. “I’d like to explore a little longer. Head back to the station if you want.”

_ Abomination! _

This time the voice was a howl, and Lydia flinched. There was no more decorum; she began to claw and flail her way back towards the hatch.

“No. We go now,” she tremored. “No questions.”

The hatch slammed shut in front of her eyes. There was a sepulchral silence.

“Why did you shut the hatch?” asked Bova, kindly. Lydia hammered on the access panel.

“It won’t open. We’re locked in.”

“Sister Octella,” Bova began, which meant she was cross. “What are you trying-”

She stopped, and Lydia twisted round to look at her. The cavalier was frowning under her plex, eyes flickering over the computer readouts. “That’s odd. Ship systems are coming online.”

Lights flickered weakly around the dim walls, casting strange reflections on the placidly drifting and gruesomely frozen bodies. There was no sound in the vacuum, but Lydia felt the walls begin to rumble. 

“Amazing,” said Megaera, softly. “It’s haunted. After all this time.”

“Are you telling me we have to deal with a horde of reanimated dead twice in two days?” wheezed Bova.

“Too frozen. They can’t move, they can only...haunt.” The girl was rifling through the clothing of the nearest cadavers. “These people were not from any House. They must have come a long way. To have lasted so long after death - they’re highly motivated, to put it mildly.”

“Can’t you ward us?” said Bova.

“There’s no blood. Can’t remove the haz.”

“Exorcism?”

“Maybe one by one. There are hundreds of revenants in this place. And there’s no time.”

“What do you mean?”

“Can’t you feel it? It’s getting warmer. They must be messing with the coolant system. If that goes down this whole thing will literally melt with us in-woaaah!”

A pipe next to Megaera’s legs burst with a sudden spume of white gases. The girl was sent tumbling down the length of the ship. 

_ Death cultist. Worms of a false god. Servants of perversion and murder. Sun killer! _

The whispers filled Lydia’s skull like feathery webs of malice. She’d dealt with revenants before, and worse. But this was far beyond anything. For the first time in a long time, she entirely lost her grip on the natural and somewhat sociopathic self-belief instilled in her since childhood. Fear consumed her. She could do nothing but watch as the girl vanished among the lifeless, ragged flesh shells whose former spirits were bent single-mindedly on their demise. And it was getting warm.

“There’s another hatch down here,” Megaera’s voice sounded right inside Lydia’s helmet, even as her body sailed away. The whispers faded temporarily, and Lydia shook herself. “It would have led to a shuttle. Damn. The survivors must have used it to get away.”

_ Death to darkness and wizardry! Cleanse it with fire! _

“Enough!” cried Lydia. She pushed herself away from the hatch where she’d been cowering. She summoned all her power to her, her whole haz dancing with electric tendrils, casting reflections across the gravity-less mausoleum as she floated among the dead. “We are not your enemies! Release us and we will find who did this to you. We will avenge you! I swear it on the humanity of our ancestors!”

There was no sound in the drifting abattoir. The bodies and blood-ice bobbed and collided like miniature asteroids in a crowded field, but the temperature was still rising, and some of the crystal shards were looking more like liquid blobs. The voices were gone - until they weren’t.

_ No mercy for necromancy! You...will...BURN! _

Lydia thought that something seized her. She screamed as she was pulled hard into the nominal floor of the ship with a brutal crunch. But the pain was nothing compared to the vision of dozens mangled corpses descending atop her. Though their gory innards were rapidly liquifying, they still lacked animation; they simply fell towards her, piling up as she turned her head away and raised an arm to defend herself from the engulfing mound of blood-sodden flesh.

Just as Lydia could stand it no longer, the mound billowed outwards; her own horror manifested in an explosive burst of spirit energy. This created only a moment of reprieve. A second later, she felt her stomach drop away as her body plummeted to the opposite wall of the ship, slamming down with another squelching crunch amid a hail of even-more-eviscerated, raggedy bodies.

“They’re messing with the grav plates. Hold on!” she heard Bova yelling. The cavalier leapt from her perch by the console and hero-landed at Lydia’s side, one knee raised. She helped Lydia to her feet just as the gravity reversed again, but this time Bova held her tight at the waist, wedging herself part-way inside a stasis pod on what had just become the ceiling.

“Where’s the child-” began Lydia, ignoring the pain from countless nascent bruises.

“I’m fine, and I have a name,” came Megaera’s voice, calmly, though Lydia had no idea where from. “There’s some blood now. I’m working on a ward, but it won’t be enough to end this before we’re toasted.”

“Just stay alive. Bova, what can we-”

_ DIE! _

The gravity switched, and again they were pelted with bodies. It was becoming intensely warm in the haz suits, not to mention intensely hard not to puke. Sweat ran freely down the folds of Lydia’s skin. She thought she noticed some of the thawing meat begin to wriggle.

“We can’t move, or we’ll get hurled about. We’ve probably got only a few minutes before we boil,” Bova was saying, as a loose hand began to claw at her foot.

She looked into Lydia’s dark brown eyes. Neither Templar spoke. They barely saw the squirming mass around their legs. 

“If there wasn’t a little Seventh girl listening, I might say something important about now,” said Bova. 

“Don’t mind me,” said Megaera. “I’ve got nothing ‘important’ to say to either of you old losers. Lord, it’s hot.”

_ How does it feel, necromancer? How does it feel to finally know death? True death: clean, hot and mercil- _

The voices stopped mid-monologue as the hatch where the three living humans had first entered blew open in a silent puff of supersonic shrapnel. Through the hole came a haz, its arms held aloft and fizzing with flawless, blue-white soul-fire. Behind it was a second red suit, this one with a rapier at its hip. Lydia couldn’t well see the faces through the reflections in the plex, but the necromancer’s mouth was moving in a convocation that would probably have rung out mighty and righteous if it had carried over the vacuum. 

The blue flames flared, and Lydia thought she heard an ethereal howl of anguish. She felt pressure in her ears, and then it got worse; greenish fire sprang up from Megaera’s wards at the other end of the ship, as if in answer.

The gravity plates deactivated, and they were weightless again. Bova pushed them off, and they plunged through the red and viscous debris towards the newcomers. Up close, Lydia could see the glowing symbols of warding all across their suits. As she looked back, she saw Megaera bounding up towards them in her comically baggy haz like it was all a fun little game in the charnel chamber. They clambered out of the ship and into the corridor beyond; the hatch was already beginning to buckle as the metal softened. 

Bova sealed a bulkhead behind them and immediately the temperature dropped as the space station’s systems took over. They staggered back to the Eighth House shuttle, just in time to watch through the plex when the haunted ship broke off from the station and tumbled into the light, where it shriveled and burnt into nothingness. 

There was a collective hiss of decompression as they removed their helmets and began to gulp down water and dab at the sweaty torrents on their skin. Blobs of unmentionable innards slopped from their suits to the floor. Lydia paused to give a small bow to the two new arrivals.

“You have the thanks of the Eighth House,” she said, simply. “I’m Lydia Octella, Steward of the White Glass.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Sister Octella, even under such circumstances. Edwin Pentaros at your service, Lord of Koniortos Court. And I believe you’ve already met my cavalier, Serafina Quinnion.”

The cavalier they’d already met was shaking out a familiar bob of light brown hair. Her eyes twinkled strangely as she bowed.

“I think this makes us even,” she said.

Bova snorted very quietly at the other end of the shuttle.

“We’re grateful, as I said,” Lydia replied quickly, and turned to the new male adept. He was in his late twenties, tall and patrician and grave beyond his years, though his gold-streaked hair was shaggy and longer than Serafina’s. This added a certain barbarian musk to his composed, courtly posture. Lydia attempted to muster her Eighth chill as she continued: “But I must confess I’m curious to know how you come to be here, Lord Pentaros.”

“We followed you, of course. I would have made contact earlier, but I was unavoidably detained at Ida after the memorial. It seems it was fortuitous we arrived when we did.”

Lydia intensified to horrible Eighth expression #12: growing belligerence.

“The White Glass would surely be curious why the scion of the Fifth House is tracking its Steward about her business.”

“It’s nothing sinister, old girl,” said Edwin, causing Bova to actually growl. “I promise. The fact of the matter is this: we’re jealous. The Fifth House has been trying to organize a formal investigation into the Canaan House disaster for weeks now. The Fourth and Sixth are with us, but we’re stymied at every turn by Cohort bureaucrats and obsequious excuses. At one point, someone actually made static noises over the line to me! And here  _ you  _ are, not bothering with the other Houses like typical Templars - you’re just out here getting it  _ done _ . It’s bloody marvellous. We’re impressed.”

“The business of the Eighth House is private for a reason, Pentaros. This borders on hostile espionage; we’re not interested in joining forces with-”

“We didn’t come to team up, my dear Steward. We came to do business. To make an honest trade. We have something we think you’ll be interested in.”

The cavalier, Serafina, reached into a satchel and pulled out a ledger. It was perhaps the most extraordinary tome Lydia had ever seen, including the actual Tome. The covers were made of craggy human leather, blackened by age, and between them was stuffed more paper and flimsy than Lydia had ever seen in one place. Serafina had to use both arms just to hold it.

“Is that…?”

“It is. The life work of Abigail Pent, greatest chronicler and spiritual theorist in the history of the Nine Houses, and the person who was dearest to me in all the universe. She would want it to be shared.”

Lydia’s breathing slowed. Her eyes grew very wide.

“Your price…”

“It’s yours for a full month. If,” Edwin smiled sadly. “If you honestly and openly share everything you know about the Emperor, his Lyctors and what in the name of all that’s holy happened at Canaan bloody House.”

There was a long, long silence.

“No,” said Lydia. 

“What do you mean, no?” Edwin yelped.

“I mean I can’t-”

“I accept.”

They all turned. Megaera unfolded her arms and stood up: tiny, baby-faced, fearless. 

“I know just as much as the Eighth,” she said. “I’ll make the trade if they won’t.”

“You’re five years old,” said Edwin.

“Stop!” Lydia commanded, before Megaera could launch her inevitable invective. “We confer.”

She took the Seventh House girl by the arm and dragged her into the pilot’s compartment, sliding the dividing wall shut behind.

“What the Hell was that!” Lydia whisper-shrieked. 

“Don’t worry. I’ll share,” protested the child, a picture of misjudged innocence.

“That’s exactly the problem!”

“We need those notes, Octella. Everyone knows Pent was working on the River. I’ll bet she got farther than anyone before.”

Lydia clutched her head and furiously shook out her inky halo of hair. 

“I lost my mind when I let you help us. What part of ‘existential treason’ do you not understand? We can’t tell  _ anyone  _ what we’re working on here! That man out there is not our friend. He’s a loyal follower of the King Undying, just like every single person in this system aside from me, Bova, and the revenants on the ship we just escaped. And maybe you, if I’m very lucky.”

Megaera rolled her eyes.

“One day I won’t have to keep reminding people that I’m not a moron. I think about that day a lot,” she said, bitterly. “I wasn’t going to tell him our  _ motives _ , you fake inquisitor dumbass. And I wasn’t going to tell him anything incriminating. At the very least, we should bargain. There’s something else we could really use from the Fifth House, aside from Pent’s research.”

  
  


A minute later, the pilot’s hatch opened and they stepped out to find Edwin, Serafina and Bova studiously ignoring each other. Lydia looked to her own cavalier, who was casually scratching behind her missing ear like she was the only human being in the universe..

“On the ship’s computer. Did you get coordinates?”

Bova nodded.

“Good work. Lord Pentaros: the Seventh and Eighth Houses wish to propose new terms. Certain information of the kind you requested is unfortunately held in strictest confidence and beyond our power to share. However, there is much in which we would be willing to collaborate. We discovered this station from information gleaned in the course of our last investigation. And now we have a new destination. We offer you the chance to accompany us, along with a full briefing on the mission parameters. In return, we get researcher’s access to Lady Pent’s work, and one more thing. You will provide us a stele.”

The head of the Fifth House grinned.

“Aha! Now we’re talking!” he said.

  
  
  



	6. Chapter 6

“When I ascended to the Stewardship of this House, I swore that in addition to my duties of preserving our Order and ensuring the tenets of the Tome retain their hallowed and eternal supremacy across the Empire, I would also thoroughly and unconditionally resolve the direst matter facing the Eighth House in this its myriadic year.”

Lydia peered over her pulpit at a familiar mayonnaise vision. The stinging peroxide white of the Cathedral of Joy was rendered a shade of dull snow: a thousand stainless cloaks adorning a thousand blemishless shoulders, hunched along hundreds of hideous white pews. Two thousand Templar eyes gazed upwards as she continued from her dramatically raised vantage:

“I refer, of course, to the disaster of Canaan House. Just under one month ago, the Master Templar of the White Glass died violently far from any field of battle: the first Master to perish in such a fashion for over six thousand years. I promised this congregation answers, and I am pleased to say that I remain confident in the fulfillment of this promise. Already I have made significant progress. I have visited sites of key pertinence, and have established channels of collaboration with other Houses. One such channel has yielded the most important prize of all: a successful audience with Master Octakiseron’s spirit, where our own callers failed.”

She paused while several murmerous ripples squirmed across the blinding assemblage of Templardom: a thousand shades of the same colour riled into susurrus of speculation. 

“A full account of our communication will be provided in my final report. For now, the Eighth House should know that its Master acquitted himself with superlative courage and resolution in his final days. He wished me to convey his undying devotion to all righteousness and to the Glass, and his humble gratitude for the part he was given to play.”

She closed her eyes in what she hoped would be interpreted as religious awe, took a deep breath, and finished:

“Let us pray to our merciful God the Emperor, that His wisdom may guide us in this trying time.”

And the antiseptic chorus rose in a thrumming, monotone voice, so that the whole lofty vault rumbled with a formless echo: _ Let the King Undying, randsomer of death, scourge of death, vindicator of death, look upon the Nine Houses and hear their thanks… _

  
  


“A beautiful service, Sister, and a fine sermon,” came a posh voice as Lydia and her cavalier were servicing their old shuttle, a few hours after the ceremony and subsequent small-talk had ended. “Are you sure you can’t stay longer? The House is empty without either Master or Steward.”

Abiatha Octavimus, Seneschal of the White Glass, trotted towards them across the hangar floor. His oil-slick hair gleamed above a taught and loveless face. Behind him marched an eight-strong retinue of guards clutching white-steel axes.

“I would like nothing more than to devote myself to the daily administration of the Order. Alas, my first task is not yet complete, and I must depart again,” Lydia said, carefully neutral, feeling Bova’s tension behind her. “I’m certain House affairs are safe in your capable hands. Oh. How thoughtful of you to bring a party to see us off.”

“It is gratifying to know that our Steward has a keen sense of her priorities,” Abiatha said, and he grinned. “Tell me, will your work bring you back to the First House again?”

Lydia had been expecting something like this. She didn’t hesitate.

“It will not. My investigations there were quite informative, and I’m so glad that you are taking the time to keep track of my whereabouts. I’ve been meaning to write you updates, but I see now there’s no need.”

“The activities of the Steward are of paramount importance to the White Glass,” the Seneschal’s long face was no longer smiling. “They are naturally followed with great interest, and they must  _ all _ be accounted for.”

There was a vast and bottomless pause as he and Lydia locked eyes, while Bova did the same with the armed escort.

“We are all servants of the Glass, Brother Octavimus. And of the Emperor,” Lydia said, quietly. “We all work for the same glory.”

“Oh yes, you’re quite right. I’ve been so busy lately that I almost forgot,” replied Abiatha, face dark as a mausoleum. 

“Goodbye, Brother.”

“Travel safely, Sister.”

  
  
  


They found the Fifth House transport ship where it was supposed to be - far enough from Dominicus to render the proud star of the Emperor little more than one particularly bright dot among a million pointillistic comrades. They left their own small shuttle to drift - likely never to be found again. Lydia felt an inhalation of guilt about that, but it was largely forgotten when they stepped onto the new vessel, which was about three times the size. 

“Oh look, a stele!” said Bova, immediately. It was the obvious thing to say: the stone was eight feet tall, covered in dead languages, and continually bathed in oxygenated blood via a clever system involving tubes, plex casing, and an extracorporeal membrane unit. It dominated the space inside the ship, which was otherwise little more than a cargo hold.

“Perceptive as well as good with swords,” called Edwin from across the installation. He had abandoned his Fifthish robes in favour of what he probably thought was adventuring gear: a white and only slightly frilled shirt, a trim leather jerkin and nylon trousers with lots of pockets, all of which made him seem even taller than before. Serafina still sported her stylish and athletic combat gear topped with a somewhat opulent gold-trimmed jacket. Megaera, lounging in the pilot’s chair, had merely changed into another set of sweatpants and a cosy-looking hoodie, this time sporting a picture of a rose and the slogan  _ All roads lead to Rhodes _ .

“What?” said the girl, seeing Lydia’s eyebrow rising. “I’m a great ambassador for my House and I’ll stab anyone who says otherwise.”

“You may not wish to advertise that fact, where we’re going.”

Megaera’s reply was interrupted by the Lord of Koniortos Court.

“The coordinates you got from the haunted ship are set. We’re ready when you are, Eighth.”

“Good. I just want to remind everyone one last time that this journey is completely voluntary,” Lydia said, searching each of the faces turned to her. “It will likely be very dangerous. I would feel better if I were not risking-”

“Yeah yeah, we get it,” said Megaera with an over-acted yawn. “Just hold on to your Tome.”

And she hit a button on the console. Several letters or glyphs on the stele flared with blue light under its skein of blood, the whole ship shuddered, the world went  _ wobbly _ -

All sound seemed to drain away. The people and objects around Lydia somehow managed to vanish softly, like they were fading out of focus, and yet a chainsaw live-wire sensation in Lydia’s brain made her feel like she had never been more  _ present-  _

And it all snapped. There was a crack like a planet split in half by a bolt of cosmic lightning, and the universe see-sawed back to where it ought to be.

“So cool,” said Megaera, craning her neck to stare out the window at the ten-kilometer spire of black stone on top of which they were now perched, hanging motionless in an empty expanse of space.

“Well that’s the easy part,” said Edwin. “It’ll still be a day or two at top speed before we reach the system we want. It doesn’t appear in any Cohort files that I could access, by the way.” He turned to the Duchess. “Oh, and next time, I get to press the button.”


	7. Chapter 7

Lydia stepped inside the cell. The guards pulled the iron bars shut behind her, and she closed her eyes at the echoing, mechanical thunk of the key being turned. The guards walked away.

She took a few steps and slumped against a cinderblock wall. The wall was all she had left, trapped in a grimy jail, stripped of vestments, armor and companions, powerless on a thalergetic world an incomprehensible distance from home. She wondered what Bova would say.

“Do you serve the Emperor?”

Lydia didn’t start or jump at the voice. She had already clocked the cell’s other occupant, who was curled on a plastic pallet. It was a woman with skin almost as dark as her own, dressed in the same teal-grey prisoner’s jumpsuit. 

“I do.”

“Do you have any news?” The woman twitched a little and raised her head to briefly eyeball Lydia.

“Not really,” said the eyeballed Lydia. “Perhaps it would help if I knew your name. I’m Lydia Octella, former Steward of the Eighth.”

For a long time, there was no sound except their breathing and the prison wing’s distant clanks and footsteps.

“I too was a House heir, once,” Lydia’s cellmate sighed at last, motionless on her mattress. “I had hoped I would never meet another.”

“Why?”

“They all turn to corpses or to traitors, in the end. I used to believe with such certainty that no mortal of the Nine Houses could ever betray the King Undying. But his enemies are everywhere. And I cannot save him.”

“That is a grave tale,” said Lydia. “You must tell me what you know. Perhaps together we can escape this place.”

“No. I would sooner shrivel here than trust another of the Emperor’s servants.”

“At least tell me your name.”

Silence. Minutes passed.

“I miss her,” said Lydia, not taking her eyes from the other woman.

“Your cavalier,” the other replied immediately, with no trace of a question.

“She was the only one who ever made me laugh. Her name was Bova Aiglos. A vision with the rapier.”

Lydia was surprised when her cellmate responded with a faint chuckle.

“Every adept calls her cav a vision. I remember Aiglos. Powder offhand. Marta floored her in ten seconds at the Tisis exhibition trials.”

Finally the other necromancer sat up and met Lydia’s eyes with a sad grin. The movement revealed a miserably wilted left arm, and the rest of her looked little better. She was gaunt as all hell. Lydia took a deep breath.

“Marta Dyas’ skill was famous, Captain Deuteros,” she said. “But it has been somewhat eclipsed by her more recent notoriety, and yours. You both died at the First House, along with every heir but two. I’m sure you can imagine the kind of questions it raised for all of us - for all who hold the Resurrector dear.”

The malnourished prisoner scowled.

“Do not use Marta to draw me out like that a second time, Eighth,” she said. And she continued to scowl for a long moment further. “But you’re right. The Houses need to know what happened, what’s... happening. I am certain you will never leave this place, but perhaps…”

She pulled herself up against the opposite wall to that against which Lydia sat. Despite her extreme frailty, her posture was that of a steel girder.

“I was scion of the Second House, and ranked Captain of the Cohort. I will give you my testimony.”

  
  


Later, the guards came and took Lydia to an interrogation room. The room and the cell were the only familiar things about this world: the stark language of power and human processing was the same everywhere. 

Everything else was wildly different. Just the short walk from down a single corridor of this facility was weird as hell - the undecorated walls, the freakishly secular uniforms worn by the guards. The gilt-framed portrait of a redhead. There weren’t any skulls or human body parts anywhere. There wasn’t even anything dead: this culture was scrupulous, nay,  _ obsessed  _ with immediate cremation. She’d never been anywhere so free of thanergy that wasn’t space.

It was even worse at first. When the five of them had touched down and tried to reach the coordinates, they had hastily attempted to blend in with local clothing, dialects and gestures. But negotiating this crowded, atmospheric planet with its huge cities, byzantine institutions and worst of all, its undying loathing of all things necromantic, had proved...difficult. And here she was.

A full three hours after Lydia had been installed in the plain white room, the interrogator arrived. She was short and officious, with smart black hair and the grey-beige uniform of local law enforcement. Two taller female guards, armed with pistols and truncheons, flanked her as she entered and seated herself facing Lydia across a steel table. 

“You’re not Cohort,” said the woman, not looking at Lydia, and not making a single attempt at introductions. Her finger was repeatedly sliding across a tablet screen as her eyes ingested its contents. “So why are you spying on us?”

“Because I found a ship full of people murdered by the Emperor, and it launched from here,” Lydia replied, attempting to match the woman’s confidence and lack of hesitation.

“What ship?”

“The  _ Homecoming _ .”

The woman looked up, her sheet-black hair momentarily ruffled.

“It was at Earth?”

“It was near Dominicus. The center of the Nine Houses.”

“Planets.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“A house is a building. You live on nine planets, not houses.”

“It’s just a name,” said Lydia, with a wry smile. “I’m surprised you know the ship I’m talking about. It was clearly very old.”

“Everyone knows that ship. It discovered what had happened to the Solar System five thousand years ago. There were only two survivors. We think he let them go so he could track their shuttle back to us.”

“Why would he want to find you?” said Lydia. This caused the interrogator’s neutral bureaucrat expression to vanish beneath a mask of revulsion. 

“You worm. Why did you really come here?” she spat.

“To get answers to these questions. My mission is to expose the Emperor and his many crimes. I need evidence.”

The woman stiffened, as did one of the guards.

“You expect me to believe that?”

“I do,” said Lydia. “I want to work with you. We have the same enemy.”

“Even if that were true, we’ve tried working with you people before. It always goes poorly. Safer to put you back in the cell with the other witch.”

“I thought you might say that,” Lydia sighed. “Judith told me about the Lyctors, and the Canaan House survivors. If you won’t help me, I will have to settle for what I have already taken. Is there anything I should know, Sister?”

The woman’s mouth became a circle of hesitation. Her confusion multiplied drastically when the taller guard behind her answered gruffly:

“Heptinary had to stay in position to secure the exit. She can join us on the way out. Otherwise, no changes.”

While she spoke, she stepped forward and unlocked the restraints around Lydia’s hands. The necromancer stood, looked her cavalier in the eyes, and gave her a big hug. Bova hugged back, with feeling. It was so weird to see her without her rapier.

“Sickening,” muttered Serafina, in the other guard’s uniform. She was applying the same cuff to the unprotesting wrists of the interrogator, who was staring around the room like she was having a stroke. 

“You...turned...my officers?” she stammered. Lydia knelt alongside her.

“Listen, Comrade Faithless Is He That Says Farewell When The Road Darkens Por Qué No Te Callas Despite The Constant Negative Press Covfefe. I wasn’t lying. I do want to work with you, not against you. But you gave us no choice. We learned that when we got here - seven months ago. We knew you wouldn’t accept us as we are, so we became ...you. We got jobs where we needed to be, to get the evidence we needed to get. And today, you finally let me see Captain Deuteros of Trentham, possibly the most important living soul in the universe who isn’t immortal. We can finally go home. But we intend to make some noise when we do. So here’s my message to your commanders: be ready. The Emperor is about to become more vulnerable than he’s ever been. If you decide you want in, you can reach me on this frequency.”

She left a scrap of flimsy on the table, turned to leave, but stopped at the door.

“It was nice to talk with you, Faithless. I hope we meet again.”

  
  
  


“So. You intend on active treason,” said Serafina, as the three of them marched down the halls of the government facility. 

“Is that going to be a problem?”

“I… not for me. I have seen enough. Edwin and I have discussed it. I believe he will come around too. The Duchess?”

“She’s more gung-ho than any of us. She really liked Septimus.”

Even as she spoke, Lydia saw the child in question emerge from a door leading to the control room.

“They’re blind and deaf for the next twenty-five minutes,” she said, chewing enthusiastically on a strange rubberized confection the natives called  _ gum _ . “How’d it go?”

“Well,” said Lydia.

“Deuteros?”

“She’s not ready for what comes next. We’ll come back for her, I hope.”

They passed a pair of administrators in the hall. Lydia put her hands behind her back to feign capture, but it was unnecessary. Neither of the functionaries gave the group a second glance.

They emerged onto a tarmac airfield. A gleaming steel spacecraft was idling nearby. On board, they found Edwin dressed in a local pilot’s uniform, beaming at them.

“Lord, if you’d told me seven months ago that this would all work out so nicely, I’d have called you a… raving optimist,” he greeted them, as he worked the control console. “Now if everyone’s ready, you can stow your tray-tables and place your seats in an upright position.”

He looked around at the lack of response, and found four women glaring at him.

“It’s what they say here when-”

“We know, Pentaros! If you’d be so kind as to get us off this necro-phobic planet any day now, I’d be much obliged.”

Edwin sighed as the ship built up speed down the runway. 

“Suit yourself. Personally, I’m going to miss this place. No one expects me to be in charge here.”

The shuttle left the ground without so much as a whisper. Overdrive engines kicked in, pushing everyone deep into their seats. The vessel streaked through the blue, alien atmosphere like a knife, and then all at once it flared - and vanished.

  
  



	8. Chapter 8

**All Houses, Imperial Bulletin**

Testimony of Lydia Octella, Steward of the Eighth House.

The ten thousand and first year of the Resurrection

Being the Case Against God

Abstract

In this paper, the author will examine the secret life and actions of the Emperor of the Nine Houses, using irrefutable evidence to demonstrate his criminal nature.

We begin by disclosing events leading to the violent deaths of most of the heirs and cavaliers primary who attended Lyctor trials at Canaan House. Through interviews with eye-witnesses, including the deceased Silas Octakiseron and the living Judith Deuteros, we will show that the Emperor never intended any participant in the trials to leave the First House alive, unless they had attained Lyctorhood. This murderous plan was designed to safeguard the Lyctors’ true secret, namely that their power derives from the forfeit of their cavalier’s life, and use of the soul as perpetual thanergetic fuel.

Next, we will explore the Emperor’s early life and career. Through materials uncovered in storage on the First House, and through records preserved by colonists who left that House before its death and resurrection, we find that this individual’s name is John Gaius, a scientist who abused certain technologies to endow himself with his divine powers. 

Two technologies are of particular importance: first, man-made lifeforms with artificial intelligence, which were created and enslaved to provide vehicles for necromantic power. One of these, the Artificial Soma Control Unit, was recovered recently in the Field. Another is currently depowered and kept in the tomb of the Ninth House, in order to prevent her acting against Gaius and his Lyctors to avenge their crimes. 

Second: experimental dimensional osmosis. The extensive research of the late Abigail Pent, in conjunction with the discovery of an ancient laboratory on the First House known as the Wellspring, proves that Gaius, or rather his pre-Resurrection colleagues, used particle colliders to create new liminal dimensions as a source of spirit energy parallel to our own universe, facilitating the advent of necromancy and providing a direct and limitless source of power that could be tapped via Gaius’ artificial lifeforms. This realm, which we call the River, has served to trap the souls of the dead, preventing them from crossing to a peaceful rest, and instead preserving them as bodiless, ravenous and insane ghosts who add to the power of Gaius’ necromancy. Gaius is well aware of their torment, which benefits him directly.

Finally, we explore the birth of the Nine Houses. Evidence discovered at the Wellspring, combined with an exploration of orbital solar facilities, proves that Gaius intentionally “killed” the star Dominicus - these stations, which he installed for this purpose, remain in place today. He used the death of the star and its planets as a means to commit genocide against the system’s ten billion inhabitants, sending their souls into his new “River” and harvesting their thanergy via a containment AI who he forcibly Lyctor-bonded with himself. 

After resurrecting a small portion of the murdered billions, Gaius has spent the following myriad attempting to pursue, destroy or enslave surviving humans in other systems as part of a personal vendetta stemming from perceived pre-Resurrection slights.

We conclude with a personal message, calling the Nine Houses to look past the religious and military demagoguery that has enshrined this criminal as an object of devotion, and to join the author in a general overthrow of his supremacy.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The previous chapter would have been a sensible, satisfying place to end, so I will of course ruin it by adding this one last chapter.

Vice Admiral Morena Tetrophacles tried and failed to suppress a twitch at the sight of white robes. She styled it out by immediately stiffening into a cohort salute, the refuge of nervous soldiers throughout all known time and space. Approaching her from the airlock came a grim and colorless retinue led by a long-faced man with gelatinous black hair.

“Welcome aboard the  _ Emperor’s Dominion _ ,” said Morena, a little too loudly. 

“The White Glass notes your cooperation, Vice Admiral,” said the man, with a slight bow. “Abiatha Octavimus, Steward of the Eighth. I’ll speak to them immediately.”

“Of course. Follow me.” Morena turned on her heel, tight-lipped. There was only one thing worse than Templar officers, and that was Templars who weren’t part of the Cohort at all. At least the man didn’t seem too angry - yet.

They marched through the steel-plated corridors of the Leviathan-class ship until they reached the guest quarters - Morena pursued by snooty staff-officers, Abiatha by expressionless Eighth guards.

“It’s a party,” said Bova Aiglos, when they all trooped into the room, which was much too small for that many people. She stood: one-eared, swordless, no longer a cavalier, wearing a scruffy brown and grey uniform from another world. “I would offer drinks, but I’m afraid I’m as much a guest here as you are.”

Morena flinched again as the Steward of the Templars turned to face her.

“Vice Admiral, where is Octella?”

“She’s not a prisoner. She has the use of our facilities.”

“She should be back any minute,” said Bova. “Make yourselves comfortable.”

Morena pinched the bridge of her nose. The Steward was clearly furious now, but there was something else that was off. She went back into the corridor. It was empty in both directions. Strange.

The Templars were already moving out past her and forming search parties. Morena looked over to Lieutenant Quaternary, her chief of staff. The officer was staring at her tablet, face slack with horror. Before she could speak, there was a cry. 

They all hurried down the ship, following the sounds to a mess hall. The corridor’s mysterious emptiness was explained - all the Cohort personnel were here. A heaving crowd of soldiers and officers in a general state of hubbub. The Templars were pushing through this mess towards a lone figure in the center of the room: thin, underfed, and dressed in nothing but an insubstantial light blue gown. The Templars seized the woman and manhandled her forward towards Morena and the Steward. The creature looked up at them from under dishevelled black curls. The Vice Admiral had never seen such lack of fear, and she’d spent most of her life at Tisis. 

Lieutenant Quaternary was tugging at her sleeve, but Morena couldn’t hear her hissed whispers over the crowd and the sermonizing voice of the Steward:

“Lydia Octella, you have consorted with the enemy and are charged with high treason. You will return with me to face the justice of the Tome.”

The noise in the room settled to an expectant hush.

“I recognize no such justice,” cried the woman, voice echoing with astonishing clarity and determination. “It is founded on the authority of a liar and murderer. Where do you think I have been these last months? Why do you think I surrendered the sovereign power of the Eighth House? I have been working, Octavimus, and I have been collecting evidence. I now have incontrovertible proof that the man we call Emperor has committed the most unconscionable crimes. That the Resurrection is a lie, the River is an unimaginable crime, and that we are nothing but the unthinking lackeys of a tyrant and a perpetrator of countless atrocities.”

For the first time in a long military career, Morena felt herself freeze. It was like she had gripped a live wire, and couldn’t let go. Her ears were receiving words that could not be processed or comprehended. She was witnessing an impossibility.

“You are more delusional than I thought, if you believe such falsehoods and inventions will ever leave this room,” said Abiatha, somewhat less loudly than Lydia.

There was a curious pause as the fragile-looking woman showed them an unreadable expression. The Templars still stood beside her, looking to the Steward for a sign. Quaternary passed something into Morena’s hands - her tablet - so the Vice Admiral was looking down at its dim screen when Lydia replied:

“I have already shared them.”

There it was on the tablet interface: a plain document headed with the words  _ All Houses, Imperial Bulletin _ . Morena glassily skimmed some of the contents - the message was not short. None of this was right. None of it was possible. But the woman continued:

“My testimony has been circulated throughout the Cohort and all Nine Houses. The truth is out, at last. All I ask, Brother Abiatha, is that you read it, and judge it fairly.” At this she looked around at the gathered Cohort onlookers. “And to all who would fight for the cause of freedom and true justice, I say this: step forward! Join me. The Nine Houses have languished too long in the shadow of a monster. It is time for a new dawn for necromancy!”

Morena was sure she couldn’t feel her limbs. She had stopped breathing long ago. There was total silence in the room - until she heard a sickly chuckle from the Steward. 

“Yes! Step forward!” he gurgled, with a laugh like the plague. “All those who would throw off the eternal glory of the Kindly Prince in favour of rank deceit, step forward!”

No one moved.

“When they know the truth, they will see the path,” said Lydia, but for the first time her voice was touched by uncertainty.

“You mean the truth you have created in your slavering lust for power? They already know it - you said yourself it has been shared. So I say again, step forward! Any who would join with heresy and flee the excoriating light of Dominicus, step forward!”

“I will step forward,” came a voice at the back of the crowd. A murmur rumbled through the room. Everyone looked around as a battle-scarred woman strode out and towards the necromancer at the center. Bova reached Lydia, smiled kindly, and lifted her hand in the air. “Salvation, no matter the cost!” she cried brightly.

Tears were streaming down Lydia’s stone-black cheeks. A cloud of fury had entered Abiatha’s expression, but it was already clearing.

“Ah yes, the cavalier!” he shouted, just as loudly. “Loyal to the end. This is what makes the Nine Houses great! We do not waver! We do not heed apostates! We know the truth and we will give our lives to it! You see, infidel - there is no evidence so terrible, no lie so monstrous that we would ever question our love of the King Undying. And there is no word sufficiently evil to describe the abomination of those who would stoop to such devilry. There is no reply we can give except our eternal loathing. There is no punishment that could be worse than that you have already inflicted upon yourself: to be removed from the unrelenting love and adoration of He who vanquished death!”

Morena felt herself close to tears now, watching the two women as they gazed about the assembled crowd, as they searched each onlooker with pleading eyes and finally - as they were seized and dragged away - looked only at each other.

  
  
  


The brig of the  _ Emperor’s Dominion _ was little more comfortable than the prison Lydia had visited just days ago on a far-off world. Bova was better company than Judith Deuteros, it was true, but even she was unable to rouse Lydia from the pit of her own despair. The necromancer was almost catatonic, slumped pitifully in a corner, eyes bulging vacantly into the darkness. 

She barely noticed when Bova began whispering with one of the guards, and they crept out of the cell during the night shift, her cavalier bundling her down corridors she didn’t even register, out through a hatch in the side of the Leviathan battleship and into the sleek, FTL-capable shuttle that they had stolen from their former enemies. It was only the jolt of faux-G-force when the ship jumped away that snapped Lydia into something resembling attention.

“What are we doing?” she asked, very softly. 

Bova looked up from the control panel.

“I’m keeping you safe until you decide that for yourself,” she said, and then she smiled. “Your genius master plan totally failed, Sister. You need to make a new one, otherwise things may become...boring. I admit, it will be hard to do better than “kill God”, but I’m sure you’ll think of something.”

“There is no other plan,” said Lydia, not smiling at all. “It’s all I know. Did...did I really send the report? Did they read it?”

Bova’s face fell. She looked back to the controls.

“They read it. They ignored it. It reached all the Houses. You’ve said it yourself - reason means nothing to fanatics. But...it was a bloody amazing effort. It’s...the greatest thing I’ve ever done. The greatest thing anyone from our House has ever done. You know that.”

“The Fifth? The Seventh?” Lydia’s voice quivered.

“They can’t back you publicly. It would mean immediate execution. They sent their apologies with the Edenite who infiltrated the  _ Dominion  _ and helped us escape.”

“Where are we going now?”

“I’m waiting for you to tell me.”

Lydia made a small, wilting sound and stood up. She went to the window, and stared into black, consuming emptiness. A billion bright stars stared back.

“I need to go the rest of the way,” she said. “If I can’t win the race, I can at least make it to the finish line.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that,” sighed Bova. “You know what I have to tell you. We were supposed to have an armada at our backs. If we do this alone, it’s just plain suicide.”

“You shouldn’t come with me,” said Lydia.

Bova chuckled and flicked a few controls. The engine began to hum as the FTL mechanism spooled up.

“Of course I shouldn’t,” she said.

  
  


Lydia had imagined towers. She thought it would be a palace, or a fortress, something with huge, phallic masonry, lots of skulls and maybe a few massive gun turrets. Instead, there was only a loose nest of dead space rocks surrounding a thanergetic star. Its lifeless light reminded her painfully of the Eighth House.

Even more unexpected were the myriad frozen corpses of dead wasp-monsters, bumping idly among the asteroids.

“What the hell happened here?” said Lydia, rubbing her left temple.

“Look,” said Bova.

She was pointing at a patch among the insectoid carnage that had become… fuzzy. A little portion of space was shimmering - and then it flared with blue spirit energy, and two people appeared in the vacuum, looking as surprised as they did.

One of them was a tall, pale woman with buttery hair that shimmered and billowed without gravity. The other was the Emperor of the Nine Houses.

They looked around, spotted Lydia and Bova’s shuttle, and began to float towards it. 

Bova turned to her necromancer.

“Um…”

“Have I spent my whole life trying to destroy this man, and now I’m going to  _ rescue  _ him?” said Lydia.

“We could ...leave,” said Bova.

“No,” Lydia grumbled. “Damn it. This is what we came for. Maybe it’s perfect. Prep the airlock.”

And thus, minutes later, God walked onto their spaceship. So did the tall woman. They both looked exactly like their portraits, except that the Princess had no flesh on one arm, and God had no clothes  _ anywhere _ , other than a bloodstained, pearly white cloak loosely covering some of his upper body. 

The nude man looked at Lydia. He looked at Bova. He looked at Ianthe Tridentarius. And he burst into tears. 

It was worse than Lydia could ever have predicted. The Emperor fell to his knees and sobbed into the sleeves of his Lyctoral poncho, his naked legs shuddering with squalid sorrow. He was saying something in a horrible choked voice between sobs. It sounded like  _ Nobody likes me _ .

Ianthe glanced at Lydia, pulling her lips back in the universal expression of  _ yikes _ . She put her bone hand on the Emperor’s shoulder, like she was touching something wet and foul in a drainpipe, and patted it up and down a few times. Then she shrugged and gave up, and sauntered across the shuttle. 

“You would not  _ believe  _ the day we’ve had,” she said, affably, while God continued to sniffle by the airlock. “But what brings you out here?”

Lydia hesitated. 

“They hate me,” wailed the King Undying. “Everyone hates me in the end. Annabel, Anastasia, Augustine! He tried to throw me. Into  _ Hell _ ! He said he loved me!” More sobs. “He was  _ using  _ me!”

“Listen, Teacher -” began Ianthe.

“It’s okay. I’m okay. It’s just a little meltdown I have every millennium or so. I’ll get it together,” he said, and he took a deep breath. Then he slapped himself so hard that half his face came off in a shower of raw flesh that coated the airlock door and made everyone recoil. Before they could even process the shock, the divine visage had knitted itself back into its normal, achingly plain form. He blinked abyssal eyes at Ianthe.

“You saved me,” he said.

The former Princess of Ida looked wistful for a moment, and then she dropped to one knee. 

“You are my Lord and God,” she said. “It is my honor to serve you in any way I can.”

“That’s nice,” the Emperor said, distractedly, and he took another deep breath. “Fuck. I saw Harrowhark’s body crushed - and Gideon’s, which means I was right to suspect he was compromised too. So it’s just you, “chick” - as...he would have said.” And his lower lip began to quiver again. “One Lyctor against the rest.”

“If you show me the way, Lord, there is nothing I cannot do for you.” The golden-armed woman was really beginning to get on Lydia’s nerves.

“Yes there is. Three RBs, for a start. Oh Christ. It’s really over. All of them gone. Ten thousand years… so much still to do. How can I start all over again?”

He was standing at the window now, hands on hips, gazing at the ethereal ring of asteroids and Heralds.

“You have to end it,” said Lydia.

The Emperor spun around. He was numbingly normal in appearance, and yet every atom of him made her want to scream. It was like the whole of him was filled with the same vile black substance that showed at the fissures under his eyelids. Exactly how she remembered him.

“Did you just talk?” he said.

“You know me,” Lydia replied, and she felt a heady confidence bubbling up from some overworked Eighth gland that was incapable of context. “And I know you, John Gaius.”

“What the fuck,” said God, gesturing at their prison clothes. “What BOE nonsense is this? How did you get out of jail?”

“My name is Octella. I am - was Steward of the House of the Eighth,” she continued quickly and cooly. “When I was ten years old you murdered my parents for refusing to kill enemy prisoners. I found their bodies. Their chests had imploded. I know you, Gaius. And now the Nine Houses know you too.”

Beside her, Bova put a large, steadying hand on her shoulder, reminding her to breathe, to master the euphoria that was coming in waves. 

“I think she’s insane,” drawled Ianthe. “This is clearly not an Eighth shuttle.”

“I think I know the traitors she’s talking about,” said the Emperor, wistfully. “I guess no one told me that today is National Accuse John of Atrocities Day. Listen, Octella, if those were really your parents, I’m sorry. But just tell me now if you’re going to do something stupid and make me kill you too.”

“I’ve already done it,” said Lydia, amazed at her capacity for unfeeling. “And you are welcome to kill me. I have not come to beg mercy or to seek revenge. I have come on behalf of those who cannot come, because they are trapped in a madness you inflicted. What you have done to the living is unforgivable, but it cannot be undone. It is what you are continuing to do to the dead that you can still put right.”

She stepped forward, and Bova fell in behind her. She held out a tablet, which the man took with one hand, trying to keep his robe closed around his chest. 

“What’s she talking about, Lord?” said the dapper margarine Lyctor, but the Emperor ignored her, his eyes slowly widening as he flicked his finger over the screen.

“God in heaven,” he murmured. “I’d forgotten some of this stuff. Holy shit, you found  _ Ascu _ ? I haven’t seen her since long before… huh. So that’s what happened to the missing bodies.”

He looked up at Lydia.

“This is extraordinary. I should have made  _ you  _ a Lyctor, then maybe I wouldn’t be in this mess. And you shared it? I guess that explains the jumpsuits.”

Lydia scowled as he chuckled to himself, and Ianthe visibly bristled at the line about Lyctors.

“Doctor Gaius-” Lydia began.

“Nope,” he cut her off. “You don’t get to call me that, just because you did some digging. It’s impressive work, so I’ll give you a straight answer, but let’s be clear. You don’t know me. Not even a little bit. This here?” he waved the tablet. “This is barely a fraction of it. You say the River is bad and it’s my fault. But I can’t turn it off, even if I wanted to. And I would never want that. It would undo everything. Earth would be lost again. I don’t like that the dead suffer, Octella - that’s not what I wanted. But it’s better than the alternative, which is for the Sun of my birth, of  _ humanity’s  _ birth, to fade out and die. For all Nine Houses to perish. We  _ need  _ necromancy, don’t you see? It’s what makes it possible for life to continue.”

There was a long pause as they locked eyes, and Lydia boiled at the patronizing angle of his eyebrows. She began to compose a riposte, but it was Bova who spoke next.

“It seems to me,” she said, in her stolid contralto. “That you are too afraid of death.”

“What?” said Ianthe and John at the same time.

“You speak of life’s continuing. That is an ugly goal, born of fear. Life should be permitted to grow, to change, and yes, to die. To draw it out only makes it stale, meaningless, lost. Like your Houses, frozen forever, never permitted to evolve into something more.”

“Spoken like a true cavalier,” said the Emperor, promptly. “Hark at the philosopher. Let’s see... Sister Octella. When your parents got their poor hearts mushed, did you feel like that was just how life is supposed to be? Would you have objected as strongly as your friend here to life  _ continuing _ ?”

“How dare you. You sent them to an eternity of madness and -”

“Yes, my system is not perfect. You think I haven’t played these arguments out every day of my immortal life? But you can see as clearly as I that it works. Human civilization in the Solar System existed for ten thousand years before the apocalypse, and there wasn’t a single year in all that time that wasn’t marred by the most horrendous wars, famines, diseases and just utterly pitiful scenes. After I gave us necromancy, our last myriad has been free from all of that. Of  _ course  _ life has to continue. Of  _ course  _ we should fear death. I don’t need your freshman metaphysics galaxy brains right now.”

“So what then? You kill us and change nothing?”

“No,” said God, testily. “I take you back to jail; your own House is perfectly capable of killing you. And I do the Lyctor trials again. This time there’s no one left to screw it up. Maybe I’ll do it a few times, now that the secret’s out. Ianthe can manage the newbies, she’ll like that. We’ll sort out the damn Beasts once and for all, and then we’ll finish what I need to finish, and I can finally get some bloody sleep, maybe.”

“How does it feel?” said Lydia, her mouth dry. The Emperor was moving over to the shuttle controls, tutting to himself, no longer looking at her. “How does it feel to know I know you? I see you. We all see you - the Emperor in his new clothes. Youmphh-” 

They were her final words. Lydia found she was no longer able to open her mouth, or even move her jaw. The naked man was completely ignoring her now, though she noticed he did pull his gossamer-thin robe a little tighter around himself as he spooled up the shuttle engine. Ianthe, grinning at some private joke, had casually sidled over to man the controls alongside him. He was muttering to himself:

“I’ve had enough talking today. No one’s being nice. I want a shower and a cuppa. Ow,” he finished, and looked down. There was a sword through his heart. Its tip gleamed with divine lifeblood, violently red, while its hilt was pushed into the small of the man’s back, and was grasped in the hand of Bova Aiglos. 

Several things happened at once. Lydia’s face lit up with pride and awe. The Necrolord Prime said, “For fuck’s sake,” but it was hard to hear; the engine was reaching the height of its cycle, and beginning to emit the shrill shuddering noise that preceded an FTL jump. To Lydia it seemed like the world flooded with refraction, a nauseous shimmering sensation, a watery unreality -

God turned around, the sword sliding out of him and splattering across the control panel, his chest resealing with graceful instantaneity. Bova was looking at Lydia with big sorrowful eyes. Her lips formed around two quick syllables -

“Do it,” she said -

And Lydia found she was already moving. The Emperor raised his hand, but she was lunging for the navigation panel, taking advantage of Bova’s distraction, her back to her best and only friend - 

There was a syrupy wet sound, and when Lydia looked back, Bova was gone, and the entire back half of the shuttle was awash with vivid carmine gore.

She staggered - not with grief, since there was no more than a fraction of second to process - but with thick, fatty manacles that suddenly gripped her wrists and ankles. The Lyctor leapt towards her, rapier drawn - of course Tridentatius was not so easily sidetracked - she had seen Lydia flick the crucial switch, the one that reverted the ship’s course to preset coordinates. The Emperor was turning, sighing - the ship’s engine cut out for the briefest moment as jump velocity was achieved - Ianthe was lunging forwards - Bova was soupy wallpaper - and then it was gone. It was all over faster than the wink of a neuron.

The ship vanished. It rematerialized in the center of the nearest star. It burned.


End file.
